Last night, ZDF (public TV, Channel Two) ran one of it's public forum chat shows.....'Maybrit Illner'.
The subject? They brought on representatives from the SPD Party, the Linke Party and the FDP Party, and then got to the subject of welfare/retirement reform. Just about everyone in the group was agreeable to the idea that Hartz IV (the German welfare program for over fifteen years now) has reached a failure point. The problem is.....if you did remodel or renovate it....how much, and where does the money come from.
At some key point, the FDP guy (Christian Lindner) made the blunt statement....that it's basically a fight now between the communist social front and capitalism. The quote was: "We only talk around the edges of society....the refugees and the extremely wealthy."
To this, Lidner is correct.....the political bickering of the past year or two is centered chiefly on two things that cannot be fixed or resolved: immigration/asylum/refugees, and a budget which cannot be grown to handle the poorly designed pension or welfare situation in Germany. No one wants to make the migrants/immigrants unhappy, and no one wants to cut on the industry folks or wealthy class for most cash to fund the government. Yet the media goes back to these every single night.
It's an interesting dilemma. You've got the bulk of the working-class looking at nightly news reports, and hyped up on resolving these two significant issues, and the blunt truth is....neither can be resolved.
At some point, the Linke Party gal did suggest a massive cut on the military budget to funnel money to just correct child welfare issues, but you could sense that this amount of money really couldn't fill the pension pot or the welfare pot.....to correct the massive problem existing.
So I come to the last observation over the forum.....the three politicians were often caught by the camera as having either an angry look, or a fearful frown. I got the impression that all three were unhappy being there or talking over this subject.
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